The subject matter herein relates generally to electrical connectors and, more particularly, to connectors that include contacts secured in a housing body.
Known electrical connectors include housing bodies that hold contacts. The housing bodies and contacts may be mounted or joined to a circuit board or other device to electrically couple the connector with the circuit board or device. The contacts also may be mated with the contacts of a mating connector to electrically couple the connector and mating connector with one another. Some known connectors include cavities in which the contacts are disposed. The contacts may be receptacle contacts that receive contact pins of the mating connector to electrically couple the receptacle contacts with the contact pins. If the pin contacts are not aligned with the receptacle contacts in the housing body, however, the pin contacts may stub on the ends of the receptacle contacts. For example, instead of receiving the pin contacts into the receptacle contacts, the misaligned pin contacts may stub on the receptacle contacts. In order to provide receptacle contacts that are strong enough to withstand the stubbing of pin contacts on the receptacle contacts, some known receptacle contacts are formed by screw machining the contacts from a solid block of a metal or metal alloy. Screw machining contacts can be a relatively expensive manufacturing process.
Other known connectors include contacts that are stamped and formed from a common sheet of a conductive material. For example, some other known contacts are stamped and formed from a metal sheet. But, stamped and formed contacts may be unsuitable for use as receptacle contacts because the stamped and formed contacts are weaker than screw machined contacts and are more likely to bend or fail when a contact pin stubs on the stamped and formed contact.
A need exists for connectors having contacts that are less expensive to manufacture than some known screw machined contacts and that prevent the contact pins of a mating connector from stubbing on the contacts and causing the contacts to bend or fail.